RV Bloggers: People Are Stealing Your Pins!

Do You Check Your Pins?

Attention fellow RV Bloggers: people are stealing your pins on Pinterest and redirecting them to their own (spam) site!

I’ve found quite a few of my own pins being redirected to basically spam websites. Of course, I am reporting them to Pinterest for removal. But I can only report my own and not yours under the DMCA take-down rules. You’ll want to identify your own pins so you can add your own take down notice.

I love Pinterest! But I hate the thieves. And I definitely don’t want my pins redirecting to their spam website!

Also, I recently figured out that these stolen pins are what are making the related pins totally not relevant. Pinterest some times thinks that these pins are for the redirected site and not yours (based on reverse image searches). So it will put in similar pins to that other site. So if you find that you are getting gibberish there, consider that it is the stolen pins. Just another reason to police your pins!

How I Find Stolen Pins

Mostly, I find these stolen pins by accident. I stumble across profiles and start looking at boards. I see my own pin and scroll over the pin. If it doesn’t show my website, then something is wrong. And yes, usually these pins have all my own pin descriptions in them. They have only changed the URL! I then notice that every single or at least a vast majority of pins on the page directs to the same website. Yeah, that’s a problem.

In other words, I spend probably way too much time on Pinterest. *shrugs*

Note to Group Board Owners

I found one of my stolen pins after visiting a group board I am a member of. Please monitor your group boards for spam accounts. I know it is a little bit of extra work, but you can really help us all cut down on spam by making sure that you have quality pinners on your board. Plus, it’ll hurt your board metrics if you have spammy pinners – because those pins won’t get repinned and we all know that Pinterest rewards active boards with a high re-pin rate.

How to Report the Pins

Reporting stolen pins to Pinterest is not difficult. Click on the pin and near the top you should see three little dots. Click on this and select “Report Pin.” Next, select the option “This is my intellectual property.” You’ll need to confirm that you want to file a copyright complaint. This will open up a new tab/window for your report.

On the next page, you’ll fill out your contact information as well as the website page where the original work is located. I like to go directly to the original blog post (not just the website in general). You will also have to provide links to the specific pins in question. I’ll go through a profile and find all the pins that are the same image. In a larger profile, there are usually duplicates.

DO NOT SELECT “REMOVE ALL.” This will remove all the images, including legitimate links to your site. You only want to remove the ones specifically identified (unless you just don’t want to be on Pinterest at all).

DO SELECT “STRIKE.” When a profile has enough strikes against it, Pinterest will take action and may ultimately remove the profile. This is the best case scenario, so we all don’t have to go through the profiles. So let’s help out our fellow RV bloggers and select strike.

Continue filling out the report with the required information by checking that you are the copyright owner and that it is not a legitimate use. Then you’ll have to electronically sign the report and submit it.

General Travel Profiles Stealing Pins

All Currently Identified Thieves Removed by Pinterest!

Websites Stealing Pins

So Pinterest has a cool feature that you may or may not know about. You can look at all pins to a certain website. This is cool to see where your pins are ending up and how popular your pins are. You can also look at the pins pointing to a site to see if your pins are on there, stealing traffic from your site.

I did not include the sites that are to Blogspot blogs – those have been removed at the source, although the pins remain.

* Not all pins on the profile may be stolen but a large number were upon review. There were enough stolen pins and the other characteristics of the profile warranted inclusion on the list (lots of pins, few boards, stolen pins pointing to a known spam site).

I’ll add more as I find them. If you find other profiles with stolen pins, please let me know and I’ll be happy to add them to the list.

PS Not to be too self-promotional on this page, but I also thought you guys might be some of the more interested in all this. I’ve started a new Tailwind Tribe for sports stuff. If you are interested in joining or just want to try out Tailwind if you haven’t already: All The Sports Things by RV Tailgate Life. If you are interested in an RVing and/or tailgating group board on Pinterest, then join my All the RVing and Tailgating Things {Group Board}. Always on the hunt for great pinners!

Good News! Some Profiles Are Going Down

I went back and checked all the profiles above. Seems like Pinterest is removing quite a few of them – so the strikes are working! Here are the ones that were previously on the list but are now done here because we don’t need to keep checking them:

Search RV Tailgate Life

Get Updates from RV Tailgate Life

RVTailgateLife.com

The RV Tailgate Life says the the best tailgate is an RV tailgate. Shared stories, tips, and ideas from an RV owner and super fan Kimberly. Follow her travels across the United States and sometimes even abroad!

Disclosures

RV Tailgate Life is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
For more information, check out the Legal Disclosures.